About Kendra Parsons

As a little girl I would line up my stuffed animals and play "school". I was the teacher and my mom tells me that I had high standards of my "class". Fast forward a few years and I was graduating from Cal Poly Pomona with my degree in math and my teaching credential.

​I taught math at the high school level in Torrance, Ca for eight years. During my time in Torrance our district partnered with Loyola Marymount University where we were changing the way we taught math. I went through an intense process of training and support. Eventually my classroom became a demonstration classroom and I began supporting other teachers as they went through the same process. I grew as an individual and as an educator. Although I did not want to leave my school site, it was time for my daughter and I to move back home to Napa to be close to friends and family. I was excited to get offered a job as an Academic Specialist at New Technology High School in Napa. I spent my first year in Napa leaning about project based learning and a new school site and a new district. My second year back in Napa, I transitioned back into the classroom. ​

I have wanted to get my master's degree for a long time. Being a single mom and full time teacher, finding time was challenging. I was excited to find out about the Innovative Learning program that allowed for me to get my degree within a year while being able to do it all virtually. Continuous personal growth is incredibly important to me and I am excited to find a program that fits into my schedule and my budget while helping me become a more innovative, creative, tech savvy educator. ​​

My philosophy of education:I believe school should inspire and feed a love of learning in ALL students. I believe students should be an active part of their learning and learn by being active. I believe ALL students can learn and that schools/teachers need to value the individual strengths of each student. I believe that the classroom should be a safe place to take risks, make mistakes and be reflective.

Reflections of my Journey

My original driving question was "How does using blogging within an interdisciplinary project affect mathematics content achievement?​". I found that there was a strong correlation between their blogging score and their final assessment score; due to this, I felt that blogging was better used for formative assessment, collaboration and reflection, rather than gaining content knowledge. My revised driving questions is "In the context interdisciplinary project, with a focus on mathematics, how can blogging support students in becoming reflective learners?"

​New Tech High has already incorporated a required weebly portfolio as a graduation requirement. I hope to build on this and help be intentional about how a specific blog prompt can support students in being reflective about their work and how they can collaborate with other students by giving and receiving valuable feedback, along with interacting with both their teachers, community partners, and authentic audiences.

Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning program

When I started this course I was in my 10th year of teaching. I received my teaching credential from Cal Poly Pomona where I had an amazing professor that supported me in how I communicated my content knowledge. After college I spent eight years teaching in Torrance, Ca where I was lucky enough to be part of an amazing program. That program supported me in developing my pedagogy. The one piece missing from the TPACK model was the technology. This is my third year at New Technology High and the place where my journey with using technology in the classroom really began. I have many colleagues that set the bar high in terms of how they incorporate technology. My eyes were opened to the amount of tools that were at my finger tips. Entering the innovative learning program informed me about what could be done, pushed me to try new things and allowed me to collaborate with others about how they use tools and how they have students use tools to support their learning. I know I still have a lot of work to do in integrating content with pedagogy and technology. I think teaching using the TPACK model is a something you are always working on improving or adjusting. I am excited to continue on this journey and grow as an educator. Being a part of this program has opened my eyes to many great things. Throughout this program, I learned, explored, collaborated, connected, struggled, persevered, and all of it made me a better educator and person. ​

If you would like to take a look at my Innovative Learning Program journey, please click the link to the right in order to read my blogs and explore my website.

I would love to hear from you! Please fill out the information below if you have questions or comments.